On the initial stage of development of various products provided with electrical connection relationship such as electric products and electronic products, evaluation of the feasibility of whole product is studied based on unfixed various information, and design in such a initial stage of development is called a “concept design”.
More specifically, the concept design means design on the initial stage of design in product development, and planning study, trial production of a product or the like is performed on the stage of concept design.
In short, in the concept design stage, various objects that constitute a product (the object means various product constituent items such as software, circuit parts, chassis parts, chips, modules, interconnect, packages and chassis, which are needed in constituting a product) are simultaneously dealt with, and whether they fulfill functions and designs required in the market is studied while taking all objects in consideration comprehensively.
For example, as an example of a conventional designing procedure, description will be made for a designing procedure in developing a digital camera product. Such a conventional design procedure is divided into a product planning stage (product planning), a function design or specification design stage (function design/specification design), and a mounting design or detail design stage (mounting design/detail design), consideration of purchase or consideration of diversion of existing items from outside (purchase/diversion from outside) is done along with each of the design stages. Then, the product planning stage and the function design/specification design stage generally correspond to the concept design.
Herein, on the product planning stage, what kind of product concept or product outline will be created is considered. Specifically, what kind of catalog spec will be needed is considered, and as the catalog spec of a digital camera,
Power of optical zoom
Power of digital zoom
Necessity of SD card memory compatibility
Necessity of video shooting
Number of inches of liquid crystal display screen and the like, for example, are consideration targets.
After such a product planning stage, procedure moves to a function design/specification design stage in which functions necessary in realizing contents decided in the product planning and its specific realizing method are considered.
On the function design/specification design stage, a central processing operation function, a graphics function, an I/O function and the like are expressed on a logical block diagram.
After that, based on a design in the function design/specification design stage, the mounting/detail design, the purchase/diversion from outside or the like is performed. More specifically, functions and specific realizing methods are classified into actual product constituent items, and each of the product constituent items is individually designed, consideration of purchase or consideration of diversion of existing items from outside is performed.
Specifically, on the mounting/detail design stage, for example, design of semiconductor, design of substrate, design of wire or cable, design of flexible substrate or the like is performed.
Further, on the stage of purchase/diversion from outside, purchase and diversion of flash parts, batteries, battery units, lens modules, liquid crystal panels, panel substrates or the like, for example, are considered.
Herein, description will be further made for the function design/specification design stage. On the function design/specification design stage, the entire system schematic design utilizing a logical block diagram is performed, and in this occasion, designers perform design while referring to reference documents, explanatory materials or past cases.
More specifically, when the designers move on with design, they express design contents by manual graphics on paper, or express design contents by graphics simply using graphic tools such as Visio (trademark) and PowerPoint (trademark). Alternatively, designers do not express anything on a medium at all, but move on with design in designers' imagination.
Herein, although it is possible to grasp the operation image of a product in the logical block diagram, it is unclear specifically what kind of constitution is used to realize operations, so that he/she creates an overall operation image by attaching documents, simple explanatory papers, reference documents, past design examples or the like other than the logical block diagram.
It is to be noted that the “logical block” expresses a unit of product functions. The block is put together by an operation unit in many cases, the level of detail of expressed contents is different for each person who handles the block.
Further, the “logical block diagram” is a diagram in which electric designers list logical blocks, can see each association, and can imagine overall operation when they move on with product design.
Once the operation image of a product is completed as described above, a processing in which the completed operation image is sorted to actual product constituent items is performed. As a work for this processing, a mock-up or a barrack (prototype) is fabricated by handcraft to create a pseudo operation image. In this occasion, he/she only sees the logical block diagram and associated information for reference, so that it is extremely difficult to understand the operation image in accurate contents.
Therefore, sorting of the operation image to product constituent items had to be ambiguous.
It is to be noted that semiconductors, substrates, wires, cables, flexible substrates, flash parts, lens modules, batteries, battery units, liquid crystal panels, panel substrates and the like are fabricated by mock-ups or barracks, for example, in the example of digital camera.
As described, on the concept design stage, evaluation of various matters regarding product development, that is, functions, designs, operation images, cost or time of sales or the like, for example, tends to be very ambiguous. For this reason, not only a major rework occurs on the stage of detail design in which each object is individually designed, but also information exchange between detail designs has to be very frequent, which were pointed out as a cause of design changes.
Further, on the concept design stage, tests are conducted by actually fabricating mock-ups or barracks to confirm whether or not a problem is in a product planning, so it was pointed out that work time and expense increased.
Due to the above-described background, devising has been strongly desired for a method in which various objects such as software, circuit parts, chassis parts, chips, modules, interconnecting, packages, chassis or the like, which constitute a product can be expressed in a very ambiguous state on the concept design, and moreover, environment in which they can be designed and considered from the aspect of function and the aspect of mounting can be provided.
Further, in the concept design, tests need to be performed by actually fabricating mock-ups or barracks, whose work time and expense increase, devising of a method in which such mock-ups or barracks are not fabricated but trial production to test can be executed on a computer has been strongly desired.
It is to be noted that the above-described requests exist not only in the concept design but also in the design on various stages to no small extent, a target field of the design is not only limited to electric products or electronic devices such as various electric appliances but also covers various systems such as mechanical systems like various automobiles.
It is to be noted that prior art that the present applicant knows at the point of filing a patent is as described above and not an invention according to document publicly known invention, so there is no prior art information to be described.